Leading Up to Christmas

Our December has been so festive and fun. The kids (especially Zeke) have been so excited!

Enjoying the Christmas tree and the Christmas train. 

Advent calendar ornaments for the little tree. Two ornaments every day until Christmas. 

We got Little People nativities this year. We all love them! This is Zeke's preferred arrangement... I love how all of the animals and visitors are crowded around to see the baby. 

Gingerbread festival. The gingerbread boy and girl cutouts were the favorite part again this year! 

The primary sang at the ward/neighborhood party. Aaron got this sweet picture of Zeke and Nora singing Away in a Manger (asleep....asleep....)

Zeke was excited to go see Santa.

Nora was excited too but only wanted to get this close. 

And there were so many other things that made the season bright that we didn't photograph. Baking Christmas sugar cookies, Christmas shopping for our extended family members, Christmas parties, wrapping presents, seeing Christmas lights, singing/listening to/dancing to Christmas carols, reading Christmas stories, watching Christmas movies, and of course arranging and re-arranging our nativities and talking about the nativity story.  

Chrismtas Eve

Grandma Carlile's tradition of giving the kids Christmas pajamas has gotten even more fun now as they come to visit us on Christmas Eve to deliver the presents. 

I managed to get pictures this year before everyone was too tired to put up with a photoshoot. 

As I was taking these I was thinking about just how fast they are growing up and how proud I am of everything they are doing and learning. 

I think Christmas is more fun now that I have kids to plan surprises for! 

Leaves Have Fallen

It seemed like the leaves fell off the trees all at once this year, so we haven't been able to play in them as long as we would have liked. But (between snowstorms) the weather has been nice for getting outside to play and to gather up all of those leaves. 

Playing football at Grandma's house. After some practice, Zeke could throw fairly well. Catching needs some more practice. 

Nora's a natural at running with the ball. 

Riding the motorcycle while Grandpa and Daddy were playing catch with Zeke. 

After church, in what leaves are left. 

Zeke gathering the leaves from the slide. 

Halloween Tree

Around the end of September we got this crazy idea to do a Halloween tree. You know, like a Christmas tree, but with Halloween decorations. The kids had a blast helping decorate. 

We have so many Halloween items, and most of them usually stay boxed up because we don't have enough space to put them out. We used them all this year. 

Spider web taking over the back of the tree. 

Aaron has a Lego ghost train, which ran around the tree all October.

We loaded up the flatbed car on the train with various kinds of pumpkins: orange peanut m&ms, mellowcreme pumpkins, and pumpkin pie spiced white chocolate covered almonds my mom brought us from Costco. However, the load kept disappearing ... into Nora's mouth. 

It was a fun experiment and we enjoyed it. The tree is becoming a Thanksgiving tree as we speak, then of course it will be our Christmas tree. We'll see in January if we've still got the endurance to put snowflakes and snowmen on it!